Tokyo, March 14: Japan has lifted a state of emergency declared earlier over warnings of an approaching tsunami around the country’s quake-hit regions, reports indicate.
The tsunami alert was lifted in the country on Monday following reports of a three-meter landward wave and retreating seawater, a phenomenon that occurs before tsunamis, AFP quoted an unnamed official in Fukushima prefecture as saying.
“There is no more fear of a tsunami at this moment, but we will continue to ask our residents to remain vigilant to future advisories,” the official said.
There are fears that the death toll in Japan’s catastrophe quake might have risen to 20,000 as the government struggles to contain the damages on its quake-hit nuclear plants.
Police has reportedly said that some 10,000 residents in the town of Minami-Sanrikucho and another 10,000 in Otsuchicho were missing after Friday’s earthquake and tsunami.
The head of the Miyagi prefectural police said the number of deaths in his province alone would “no doubt be tens of thousands.”
The government estimated 46,000 buildings were damaged; 5,700 of those collapsed entirely or were washed away by the floodwaters, most of them in Iwate prefecture, the national TV reported.
The National Police Agency said bridges and roads were damaged in at least 600 places across 11 prefectures, while 66 landslides were recorded in seven prefectures.
Describing Japan’s latest quake as the nations’ greatest crisis since World War II, Prime Minister Naoto Kan took the extraordinary step of ordering power cuts to avert a nationwide blackout.
The earthquake and the resulting tsunami in Japan have inflicted a great damage to the economy of the country that is dealing with a humanitarian crisis.
Japan’s Economic and Fiscal Policy Minister Kaoru Yosano said on Monday that the recent disaster has shaken the foundation of the economy, Bloomberg reported.
“This earthquake affected a wide area, and it’s likely that the economic impact will exceed the 20 trillion yen in damage sustained during the Kobe earthquake” of 1995, Yosano said.
Billions of dollars are estimated to be needed to repair the infrastructure that has badly been damaged by the 8.9 magnitude and the tsunami that followed it.
Japan’s three giant automakers, Toyota, Nissan and Honda have halted production because of damage to the transport system.
——–Agencies